Dali and his obsession with the Angelus of Millet

(Architectural Angelus of Millet by Salvador Dali. Located in The Reina Sofia Museum.)

The Angelus of Millet is a painting that belongs to the style of pictorial realism, and with which Dali obsessed in an almost sickly way. When the artist was a kid his parents told him that he had an older brother who died at a young age, the boy was also called Salvador and they said that he was the reincarnation of his brother. Predictably, this marked the painter significantly.

His parents took him to his brother's grave, and every time he saw the tombstone with his name he felt upset. This made Dali strongly influenced by a personality crisis since he thought he was a copy of his dead brother.

Why so much interest in such painting? When Dali was just a child he saw hanging on a wall of the school a reproduction of this work; scene that affected him in a deep and inexplicable way from the first time he saw it. He always claimed to be moved and obsessed with this painting, could notice that he saw more things in his composition than the rest of his viewers and spoke of it as a clear and colorful representation that caught the eyes of man.

Later he reinterpret the painting on several occasions, the artist himself noted that the painting made him feel turbid and strange things, and that made him see beyond what was painted.

Dali spoke with a descendant of Millet who told him that where the basket with fruit was there was something else, but Millet never confirmed anything. Influenced by this conversation, the artist requested that the painting be analyzed in a more deep way, for which X-ray studies were made. After these it was confirmed that there was a rhomboidal shape behind the basket: a child's coffin.

It is said that Millet hide the coffin because of the criticism he received. They advised him that it was better to remove it since that figure was too murky for a normal picture, and it was going to bring inconveniences.

Salvador wanted to go further by also writing about the work in different books and dedicating an entire essay.

In addition to somehow he felt identified with the infant of the painting because of his dead brother (he died of meningitis at three years), Dali revealed in one of his essays that also affected him in a sexual way. He thought that the woman was taller than the man, referring to the act of the praying mantis waiting to eat her partner after the copula.

From a sexual point of view it is explained by the irrational fear that Dalí felt for sex and in general for his misogyny. In one of his books, "unspeakable confessions" he wrote: "I lived under the terror of the act of love".

In this way, it is concluded that he was not only intrigued by the picture about the matter of his dead brother and his "reincarnation", but also painting is linked to his phobia for sex. Millet's painting was an obsession for Dali for much of his life.

I leave you a 360 ° video that shows one of Dalí's reinterpretations in a deeper and more detailed way. A true visual and auditory pleasure.